Posts Tagged 'Blogging'

The Australian Governments Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation was released recently, and the inquiry can be found here ( if you do want to read it it’s a 474 page pdf) Yes it looks like it only affects Australians, but I believe the ideas presented are relevant to the general writing community, and to bloggers ( especially Aussie ones)

Basically the intent of the inquiry is to hold the free press to a higher standard, with accountability In addition it seeks to broaden what is considered as information providers or news media and encompass them in this regulation.

The report also wishes to establish a News Media Council to set standards, and handle complaints.

“11.56 The principal function of the News Media Council should be to promote the highest ethical and professional standards of journalism”

I can’t object to that principle of improving standards. “accuracy, fairness, impartiality, integrity and independence” are considered qualities in the report as being what should be common about news media, and journalistic ethics. We don’t have a bloggers code , I have my own set of right, wrong, what is fair to post, what is news, and what I say about identifiable players. ( with consideration to privacy and defamation laws)

I think when I have written I have followed those qualities closely, and generally I aspire to those qualities in my day-to-day life.

Under regulation, I can be forced legally to publish an “apology, correction or retraction, or afford a person a right to reply” or punished in court if I refuse to comply

It appears I may qualify to be regulated by this council, because a blog could fit the description as news media, I get more than 15k hits a year. ( Is that boasting?)

“11.67.. If a publisher distributes more than 3000 copies of print per issue or a news internet site has a minimum of 15 000 hits per annum it should be subject to the jurisdiction of the News Media Council”

However 11.63 talks about a news activity, but does not specially define what could be considered news, but given the low general community interest in my main subject of choice, Warcraft I may not qualify after all. If I were to write more general gaming things then I would probably meet general public potential interest.

Furthermore, 11.69 considers that further legislation may be required for foreign publishers, and WordPress is not hosted in OZ – I could be further excluded from its jurisdiction.

New Zealand Law commission defined ‘news media’ and the report recommended that something similar be adopted.

11.65 … any publisher, in any medium, who meets the following criteria:
· a significant proportion of their publishing activities must involve the generation and/or aggregation of news, information and opinion of current value;
· they disseminate this information to a public audience;
· publication must be regular;
· the publisher must be accountable to a code of ethics and a complaints process

It will bring about regulations and standards, but it will also bring about privileges.

5.13 The privileges are not dependent on the medium. The privileges are afforded to ‘journalists’, ‘information providers’, ‘media organisations’ and ‘media’…

These privileges include ( but are not all)

Protection against disclosing sources

Exemption from Privacy Act

Defences to criminal offences

Privileged access to information and events

A blog I have started reading in the last few months, and appreciate his views, especially in regards to what seems to be prevalence of some main stream media to ‘steal’ without attribution content from social media, is a blog called Fitzroyalty, written by a Melbournite, ( who may be wondering what the heck a Wow blog is doing linking him back)

His post “Just a blogger” and his blog in general addresses ( amongst local food and event reports and reviews) many of the issues that this media inquiry is supposed to consider.

He says

“The act of engaging in journalism occurs regardless of whether individual journalists are paid to perform journalism or do it on an unpaid voluntary basis”

but this is certainly not supported by some of the mainstreams media consideration of who owns the news reported through Social media.

There is a course run by the Walkley foundation on ‘social news gathering’ It also teaches “Verification, copyright and permissions and Ethical and professional considerations” Obviously the importance of social media in current affairs and news is being taken more seriously and this change is also seen in the potential of this report to not only just provide better standards but legally legitimise people who publish news, even if outside the traditional forms.

So therefore “Just a blogger” “Just a Tweeter” doesn’t mean that the news and opinions, and the information recorded is less legitimate than main stream media.
The report is a large document to read, and it still is only a report with recommendations not law, but I want to talk about the Privileged access to information and eventsfurther, because I think it will cause some reevaluation as to what a blogger can do, and help define what a blogger is or be considered as.

“5.47 The media enjoy privileged access to people, places and information including government departments, cultural and sporting events, shareholder meetings, press conferences and other events, because of the nature of the work that they do.

We have rules in Australia about Media passes. They come with qualifiers like ” nationally recognised media outlet and hold an editorial title. ” or “Persons requesting freelance credentials must provide an article published within the past six months or a letter of assignment from a qualifying editor or publication. Those who freelance occasionally and are employed by non-news organisations are not eligible for media credentials. ” Both quotes from SIA

Would redefining what news media is considered force organisations to rethink their Media pass policy? While some bloggers in some industries are considered authorities and get invited to things like a Fashion week, if a blogger is as qualified to be media as a journalist then they might want to be invited as well.

I’d like a little more respect as a blogger and a writer ( how oft bloggers get scoffed at ) Once upon a time as an adult I took a week of work holidays to do a weeks work experience at my local paper. I summarised press releases into shorts for most of that week, but I did get to write my own article, with a by line, and even a photographer for the story. The editor had a chat at the end of the week, and told me I could write, but I would need to start at the bottom which at the time meant halving my salary, and I didn’t believe in it enough to do that.

I’m happy enough blogging and writing my fiction stories, holding onto my ambition to one day be a successful author. I don’t think I could turn this blog into any other firm of money-making exercise other than a tell all book. “While you were addicted to reality tv cooking shows, I got addicted to Wow”

At first my reaction to this media inquiry potentially including ‘little old me’ or even a blog that I may one day build in name of other addictions passions. ( 15k annual qualifier seems a little low) Was a big NO, however they don’t seem to want to censor me, there is certainly room to learn to be a better public writer and I hope that setting better standards, and enforcing accountability could be a good thing as long as it wasn’t overly regulated, and forced people to apply or register to be allowed to publish.

*disclaimer – I don’t write epic articles like this often, but one of the reasons why I blog is to help work through ideas and concepts that interest me, so if on occasion I haven’t polished an argument well enough in here I will do better next time.

I promise I am not stopping blogging, just the things I start writing end up fitting into one of the below category’s – I guess sort of like a ‘writers block’ in that it’s a little voice telling you it’s crap, and so thus it becomes a blogging filter that kicks in before you hit publish.

Oversharing

You probably don’t really want to know everything, and I don’t want to tell everything. It’s not that kind of blog. ” Dear Diary.. A lady at work had me drinking Chlorophyll ( yes the green plant stuff) You mix it with water and it tastes a little weird, I am not professing to any benefit from it, but it turns my tounge green.

Dear Diary I am devouring books at an alarming and expensive rate – I keep getting involved with the wrong sort of books. They are all series of which I HAVE to read the next book in.

Negative

It’s a whine. About someone, something, and screaming at brick walls gets exhausting. I don’t want to view the game like that, I would rather focus on more positive things, because well, negative people just make you feel like crap, and it becomes infectious. and then you end up feeling negative, and I love this game. I don’t want to over do it like I did sambuca shots that one time, and can’t stand the smell of sambuca anymore. ( oversharing.. sorry!)

PVP

I am doing/was doing a fair bit of this. I am still not raiding, and most of the people I was playing with for a while was lots of Pvp, but some of them are raiding now, and the Time zone difference increase with daylight savings means that my US friends aren’t around as often so I wasn’t even doing much of that. There are only so many new things I can write about pvp, I had planned on recording in a decent Pvp playing session the wonderful things we say to each other, I got two examples quite easily, but most often unless its someone trying to talk strats – its best to ignore chat, and this is sad, and I think how long a collection of little snippets like this I could make makes me even sadder.

Irrelevant

I missed the boat on a couple of topics of discussion, there’s been enough said on it, or I don’t know enough about it to really comment on it, and I don’t want to just have my 2 cents because my opinion may not be that different and I am not adding anything to the discussion.

Uninteresting.

If I can’t find it at least mildly entertaining how do I expect someone who reads me to

Alts

I have Altitis. See what having free time does for you. You start taking Warlock family portraits

You end up in yet another Alts guild of random people on a random server where people don’t even bother talking in guild chat and it just becomes a chat of achievements and stupid “Grats” macro’s as people just leech off the guild perks ( I am..

But yes, this post made it past all those self-imposed ‘blogging filters’

Because I shall reveal the real purpose of this post.

I brought the Winged companion. Yes I paid US 25 for a pixel vanity mount. Only because I saw one in a BG, and thought ” I want one. Must have” and my poor impulse control won the battle of wills ( and it was payday.. )

I felt this was important to share, because I probably have been negative towards the sparkle pony, and to then go out and buy a shadow pony, well that is kind of hypocritical, and I made you read through this entire post to get to a very important piece of information.

This came out of an episode of House – about a personal blogger who blogged everything in her day to day life from an argument with her SO, to who her doctors were, and what they said. She seemed to be a tad obsessive about her blogging it, and it also irritated her Significant Other, and he had some statements that were gems of his own about people on the other side of the world knowing about things that should have been kept between them.

I was told once upon a time, one of the things someone least liked about me was my public blog. I guess I’m proving their point by that I am relaying what they said. Chances they still care enough to read this is slim to none though.

I guess maybe it came from a concern about airing dirty laundry, that I might tell a story about them in an un-favourable light, and people would judge them. A blog can be very one sided and I could tell you just enough to be sympathetic to me – with no means of defending themselves.

I don’t have a permi sign etched on my forehead – interact with me and I might write about it. Maybe I should.

It’s hard to write about yourself without putting into the equation you, or them, or you over there. By interacting with people I find things I want to blog about, but the context is always me. I try to be honest, state things that can be verified if quoted as fact, and take ownership of opinions and admit when I have been wrong.

You can forget however that being written about can make people uncomfortable. Even if they aren’t named – if you can see yourself in the writing – then you wonder can anyone else, and I apologize, if a line or a comment can be read in such away on it’s own that is offensive to you, but it’s not the entire context, and I will defend the context.

I had to defend my blog the other day for the first time. I wanted to try this honesty from the start thing just to see how it turned out. I never made a big deal out of it, if they were interested they would read it, it, blogs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

I have tried to be careful not to offend anyone and I’ve tried to be honest and primarily I have tried to make it about what happens to me. What I learn from the experience, what I hope for the future. What I think. People would prefer nothing is recorded, or screenshotted. Then there is no record of what we say or do.

This is my own record of what I say and do. As much a Wow players Journal as it is a blog. A way to hold myself accountable and for that I won’t apologise for.

I was reading another blog that has nothing to do with Wow – it’s a personal blog so I won’t link – but they said an interesting thing about writers making their own drama – effectively how we milk it for our writing, and that thought leads to maybe going out of our way to find Drama.

When I am really happy – Wow – raiding – life I don’t feel the need to write. Happiness is boring.

Where’s the struggle, the passion, the elitism, the finger pointing blame.

When I’m really upset at something I don’t feel the need to write about it either, sometimes because I feel it’s an extreme idea, and voicing it would make it worse, or I don’t know the full story and I have learned that raging at things when you should go to the source and ask for clarity because chinese whispers distorts facts – as we learned in kindergarten. ( ever do that.. sit in a circle whispering in each others ears a sentence to see how much it changes as it goes through each person) so I need to wait untill the rage becomes less blinding or confusing, and look at it logically, and work out how to approach it, and what is a big issue gets a label, and place to in my head.

I try to write the middle ground. If it’s a rage, so that the idea becomes presentable, and the argument is clear . I write to clarify a thought to ask questions and clear things up so at least I know where I stand on an issue – but drama is much more entertaining to read ( I read every single bad pug story!)

I have used experience in my creative writing – each of my two tattoos got a story written about them – An inspired crime /mystery short story about my tattooist which got published in a street mag, and the 2nd one was more factual recount in narrative 3rd person. A poem that paid my rent for a week as a poor uni student was about a character I met on the train. Bits of reality sneak into my fiction. However not forgetting the standard disclaimer.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

I hated one of my writing teachers for telling me to ‘write what you know’ I might not like the idea, but I do think write better, writing what I know.

But using drama as inspiration well I didn’t realise how heavily I relied on Drama to Blog.

I had never had to think about it much, untill I considered going out of my way, to get in a GDKP on server that’s getting some criticism – just to see if they are really as big A holes and jerks as everyone claims they were – I was going to count how many people they kick and replace ( apparently happens often) So either way I was pretty much guaranted a drama and therefore an interesting story I could rave on about. But the observation about writers creating their own drama got me worried – had I really run out of things to write about that I had to go out if my way to find trouble – and reflecting on the last few posts on things that will no longer be relevant when cata is out – I fear I’m scrapping the barrel.

I don’t belive as a lunch companion said – “what is there to write about anymore?” I dismissed that thought at the time because my own internal motivation is very much dependant on me thinking that what I have to say is relevant and interesting

But It’s getting to the point where I don’t find ( some things) I write about interested and relevant – I think this post is very interesting and relevant in my current state of feeling irrelevant and uninteresting.

Making a living because of something you love /enjoy doing is something I want to aspire to, and I would say most Wow bloggers enjoy/love playing Wow because they write about it, but they do it for free.

I’ve mulled over legitimizing my writing a little more by attaching my real name. Making money from my blog is not what I intend, but I call myself a writer. I’ve been paid and published, but I haven’t quite worked out if I want this blog to sit on my Writing bibliography. 625 posts, and about 2.5 years of writing. I’m a little proud. Actually I’m very proud. It’s my greatest body of work – I feel like I would be omitting something from my writing history if I didn’t ‘claim’ it.

I also think about some of the great talent we see that uses WOW as the axis idea, and motivation. Blogs, RP, Comics, Mechanima, music, craft, podcasting, add on developers. We use wow to practise, and apply a craft, or talent. Most people don’t get paid. All of these rely on donations, or ad revenue if they choose ( which surely can’t be a lot) and people’s free time to produce. The only thing I can think of that people get paid for, would be for submitting /writing for a tech mag with a budget to pay, or places like wow.com, or MMO champion. I know a couple of bloggers that have paypal donation buttons, one, Tobold uses it to buy things that he writes about, others to cover things like hosting costs, domain registrations, and so on. A contributing reason for me not wanting to earn money from this blog is it has a very low upkeep cost. Just the yearly name registration and mapping fee. I’m happy not to host it for now, and I didn’t even need to have my own domain, but I wanted to.

I don’t want a paypal donation button, and I can’t see it being worth the compromise from the little money I would earn to put my own ads on here. Though I really should pay to remove WordPress ads. ( but that becomes another expense.)

I need to work on polishing my writing a lot more, and some better more generic topics, maybe try to find more than WOW to write about, and I think I am doing that a lot more lately. Or tying Wow back to bigger issues. 625 posts though is a lot of practise. I think I’m getting better. The idea being is that I would like to write worthy enough stuff to get paid for it.

It’s annoys me feed stealers can plonk my entire post on their website, surround it with ads, and make money off what I don’t, but that’s another issue all together.

It’s also little sad creatively, that even though the words in this blog are all mine, my ideas are all mine they would not exist but for the creative talent, and copyrighted ideas of other people. I stopped writing fan fic when I was into Voyager. I have the potential to create my own original ideas, and get full credit for it, I don’t need someone elses characters to work with.

I also only have my audience because of someone elses talent, and copyright ownership. I can’t even claim original illustration – I only have this ‘freedom’ under a creative commons, As for my audience. Wow has made what I write about interesting enough to read by more people than I could have ever dreamed. I don’t think my real life is exciting enough for people to want to read about it.

It’s all well and good to have a passion, and I know people have hobbies that don’t make them money. My weirdest hobby was waving a wooden stick (Bokken) around a local park for 12 months doing sword lessons. Fun, but yes people thought I was odd – I spent a bit of money. Lessons, grading, and two bokkens that are on display in my lounge room to scare my dates, but I stopped my singing lessons because I couldn’t justify the expense for that that hobby when I had a mortgage.

I worked out that while I love playing WOW my passion is actually Writing, and I use writing about wow as a substitution for writing about other things, but I don’t think that without being able to stretch my writers wings by blogging about Wow, I would have ever tried to write more than fiction. I am very much aware how closely tied my gaming is with my blogging about Wow. If either were to stop, the other would, unless I could find a topic I was interested in enough to come up with new things to talk about.

I have a passion for writing – probably should knuckle down and learn to be a better one. We used to call self publishing authors as vanity publishers. You weren’t good enough for a real publisher to take you so you did it yourself. Blogging is a form of vanity publishing. guaranteed a space on the internet. I’ve made some money from writing. Not lately though, but yes I want to earn money from my passion for writing.

Just need to write more stuff that does not bounce off someone elses ideas.

Here you go – have a cookie. No you can’t have 2. *nods Yes they are real choc chips.

I was checking out a freelance site – as you do – because you can find the oddest things in the weirdest of places, I got a paid singing gig on someones country song demo tape once from a similar local place when I was doing Singing lessons. Fun times.

I wanted to see what people were asking for on the freelance site for writers and what experience the people who were getting the jobs had, and there was several jobs there for ‘Blog commentors’.

Fancy that – being paid to comment on people’s blogs – with I’m assuming a link back to what ever product your selling.

It clicked – some comments I get that don’t get picked up as Spam, seem to be more personalised or genuine comments, but they link back, or include links to dubious sites. It’s hard to tell from the commenter, but the email addy and site link will include something like “goldselling” or “Mageguide” and I usually spam those sorry. If I’m not making money from this – neither are you.

It doesn’t sound like a bad gig. Read blogs on a particular subject – say enough to get it past spam filters, and blog admins who don’t pick up your not a real person who really doesn’t give a crap about the post. Your not real and your intent is to profit from a strategically placed comment.

I know we all sell ourselves in someway. It’s how we discover who or readers are – yes I click on unfamiliar names and blog links and add people to my reader, if I see someone else commenting on someone elses blog post that is of interest, I’ll click there too. Thus why I try and keep the links clean.

I will not support stuff like gold selling. So uhuh.. I try and catch them all.

I do read all your comments. Including the one with a collection of swear words, or a suggestion as to what I can do with my lingerie.

EDIT – have an example of a comment I suspect to be a pay for comment, comment. On my Trolls V Enight post. It takes you to a service selling leveling guides/gold making guides ( I have spammed it) – not suggesting that people who make money from wow players also don’t read blogs, But the comment seems placed rather then thought out.

I feel a little unfair critising a comment, because some of my posts are sloppy enough to not make sence, let along some of my comments, and I don’t mean to scare off commenters I LOVE YOU! – but it feels I guess. Off. This one is a little less obvious.

I will be honest and say if not for the ability to post under a pseudonym then this blog wouldn’t exist, and besides Zahraah or Pugnacious priest is a much more exciting and exotic then my real name, which would you believe, is actually Sarah.

For the purpose of my writing – Sarah is just some chick that plays a computer game that lives in Australia. Struth. Zahraah or PP is a Shadow Priest of the Moon, born and bred in Azeroth.

I would never have felt the freedom to express myself – especially in the beginning , so publicly, if I could not have ‘hidden’ under a blogging name. I state opinions, I make mistakes, I have a sence of humor which may not be the same as other people, I like playing with new things, like the audio post, mucking around creatively with Gimp – 600 public posts are readable. Commentable, copy and pastable, linkable, googleable.

Blogging is different to a forum, but there is still self expression, still opinions, still mistakes, and still humor, people go to forums for information, advise, and they are also very much public.

I have a very common name, it’s not going to tell you much, and has low googleability. However it shows my gender quite clear, but do I really want people who call girls F’n ‘w*ores ( in vent) to know my real name? Because that player exists.

Blizzard will argue that anything that breeches T&C’s are moderated. If I had been called a F*cken W*ore in a forum – then it would have eventually been moderated, but this was done in Vent.

Not every person is mean and nasty, not everyone is sexist, racist, bigoted, annoying, out to fraud us, steal our names, blackmail or use the information to judge us. But those people exist and thus we have become more protective of our personal Identity.

The biggest issues I have ever had with people I have interacted gaming wise have occurred on services outside Blizzards control. A Guild Website, and the guild troll, and the Pug in vent that called another female player a F*cken W*ore – and I could say nothing because I had already been muted, we use these services because Blizzard have not been able to develop ones with good useability, and they are essential to our playing.

Blizzard may control what happens under their sphere of influence, but they cannot control or moderate any interaction that happens outside their domain, and the information obtainable from their domain will be useable outside.

We are in a social media age – information we post publically gets indexed, and is searchable,and is accessible by services which – for example, with someone’s email can pull up any public information on any email address – social media crawlers extract information from everywhere, and create a single profile that often for a minimal membership fee will tell you their twitter / linked in / any blogs / email addresses/ IP addresses / – If you have even a drop of ‘Google Fu’ you will find a lot of information.

While Blizzards vision is a nice ideal, in their announcement they said

“it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment — one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships”

Will this sharing make us realise that we do actually play with real people, and make us nicer players? Nicer forum posters? Make you more likely to form a better relationship?

Highly unlikely – because there are people who just do not care enough – or do not have good intent.

Funnily enough – Blizzard probably already have a list of people who are more likely to cause trouble for the majority. These are the people who have already received forums bans, game bans , they get punished by Blizzard, and get let back in the game to do it all over again. How many people get repeatedly banned from forums or the game? Why aren’t they permi banned? Maybe because they are the ones paying for name changes and server transfers the most.

Blizzard is trying to make the connections we make while playing “long lasting, meaningful relationships” When often all it requires is for me to maintain this relationship is a hi! – or exchange on external contact information.

I don’t need facilitation from Blizzard in deciding what personal information to share.

All of those other social media tools allow you to hide your webpresence, or use an alternate name publically. Any privacy concerns get addressed publically, and encouraged to change in international media. Blizzard by trying to facilitate meaningful relationships through Real ID and this recent change to forums, but will be opening up personally identifiable information on a publically accessable forum – which will be available to all untill the internet dies.

Is Blizzard saying we can’t form real relationships unless we use our real identity? What have I been doing already? The choices towards the people I choose to stay in contact with, and their choice to stay in contact with me have already been made.

When it comes to our reluctance to share – do you really blame us? Will Blizzard staff be following the same example?

The question shouldn’t be ” What do you have to hide?” but ” Why is it any of your business to know?”

So It’s a No to Real Names on forums. What would make it more user friendly?

Lock it down so you need to be logged in to read anything with anyones real names.

Turn off google indexing

Permanently Ban people from the game who have shown that by their own actions in game, or on forums that they are of questionable character – and have proven by their actions that they have no intent on making the game a friendly place to be.